PRIMAL Nemesis (Book 2 in the Redemption Trilogy, A PRIMAL Action Thriller Book 6) (The PRIMAL Series) (27 page)

AUTHOR’S FINAL WORDS

I hope you’re enjoying the PRIMAL Redemption trilogy. I’ve certainly enjoyed crafting PRIMAL’s greatest challenge yet. The good news is you’re only two-thirds of the way through.
PRIMAL Redemption
is yet to come.

So what do I have in store for PRIMAL after Redemption? Well, I’ve got another mission planned then I start work on a PRIMAL sci-fi spin-off. PRIMAL in 2055 is going to be fast, furious, and geared up with all kinds of high-tech kit.

Remember if you’ve got any cool ideas for PRIMAL missions feel free to flick me an email at
[email protected]
. I love hearing from you all.

JS

EXCERPT FROM PRIMAL REDEMPTION

PROLOGUE

KUNAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN, 2012

The four Blackhawk helicopters thundered through the night sky. Skilled pilots held the aircraft in formation as they weaved through the valley, beating their way toward an unsuspecting target. The birds had launched from Jalalabad forty minutes earlier as part of a larger force. The other aircraft, having already peeled off, headed to their separate landing zones or circled above waiting to dive down and provide close air support.

In the cabin of the lead airframe Staff Sergeant Shaun Clem glanced at the Suunto watch strapped to his heavily tattooed forearm. He whispered a prayer and looked up at the loadmaster in anticipation. The helmeted aviator manning the side machine gun turned inward and raised two gloved fingers.

“Two minutes!” Clem bellowed grasping the shoulder of the man next to him.

The call rippled through the helicopter and the soldiers conducted final checks on their equipment.

Clem increased the illumination on the red-dot sight mounted to his M4 carbine. He was feeling confident; his squad of nine men had performed similar missions countless times. They were Rangers and they were ready to lead the way.

“Thirty seconds!” yelled the loadmaster.

The squad leader felt the nose of the helicopter lift as the pilot flared to slow their descent. He adjusted one of the night vision tubes that hung from his helmet and gripped his carbine. Glancing around the cabin, he gave the boys a broad grin and unclipped his retention lanyard from the floor. “Here we go, Ranger buddies.”

They touched down with a thud. Clem leaped through the open door into the maelstrom of dust thrown up by the rotor wash. They were now in the badlands. Jogging toward their RV he glanced over his shoulder to check that the two fire teams were following. He scanned the terrain to his front as the birds roared into the sky. The thud of rotors faded into the distance.

“Alpha Two-Zero, this is Alpha Two-One, we are in position,” he reported as they approached the shallow wadi to the south of their objective. His squad fanned out providing all round security while he checked his map. The choppers had put them down only a few hundred yards from their target compound. He scanned the terrain around them. Through his night vision he could see the steep valley walls glowing green. They were the reason the helicopters had been forced to land so close to the objective. He was surprised that shots still hadn’t been fired. Surely Terry Taliban hadn’t slept through the racket of a helo assault.

He eyeballed the cluster of mud-brick walled buildings to their front. The intel guys had identified it as a key Taliban facilitation node. They had reports that weapons and
IED components
were being brought in from Pakistan for distribution. That’s if the intel was correct. So often it wasn’t. This could well be another dry hole.

“Alpha Two-One, this is Two-Zero, support by fire is in position. Commence infil,” transmitted the platoon sergeant.

Clem acknowledged the call and shook the squad out into an assault line. With a wave of his hand they surged forward. His pulse quickened and he flicked his M4’s safety off. Senses heightened, his finger was poised on the trigger. They were halfway to the high mud-brick wall when an
AK
barked, its muzzle flash bright through his goggles. The squad returned fire as they hit the deck. A gunner blasted the compound with a burst from his
SAW machine gun.

“Bound forward!” bellowed Clem over the noise.

One team kept firing as the other four Rangers scrambled to a closer position. Like a well-oiled machine they leap-frogged until both teams reached the compound wall.

“Everyone good?” he asked when they were behind cover.

They checked in. No one had been hit.

Around them the valley echoed with gunfire as the other elements of the assault force made contact with the enemy. The radio was alive with call signs coordinating fire support. Clem glanced up as an
Apache gunship
sent its rockets streaking into the darkness. A moment later an explosion flashed on a hillside.

“OK, let’s do this.”

Clem’s men stacked, one behind the other, on the doorway into the walled compound. It was open and most likely covered by an AK-wielding Talib. He waited as one of his Rangers lobbed a 9-bang through the entrance. It detonated with a chain of sharp blasts and he charged inside.

He spotted a silhouette on the roof of the building to the rear and engaged, his finger pumping the trigger. The target fell. Behind him the rest of the squad swarmed inside the compound.

More gunfire broke out from the building and he felt the sting of rounds hitting the wall behind him. His machine gunner replied with a long burst. An AK barked again before the thump of a
40mm grenade
silenced it. Clem rushed across the dust and smoke-filled courtyard weaving between piles of firewood, bundles of straw, and a tethered goat. The rest of the team followed.

He aimed his weapon through one of the windows and activated the IR flashlight. Invisible to the naked eye, the room was illuminated through his goggles. There were sleeping mats and blankets strewn on the dirt floor. He spotted an AK leaning against the wall. As he turned back toward the entrance he saw Rangers making entry. Gunshots rang out as he followed them in.

There were three bodies in the first room. One had taken the full force of the 40mm grenade. He was literally blown in half, his entrails smeared across the floor. The other two were bloodied corpses riddled with bullets.

“Good job,” he grunted as he scanned the living area. The building was single-story with one adjoining room; the bedroom he had already cleared through the window.

“Holy shit,” said his Alpha team leader, inspecting a stack of crates on the back wall. “We’re fucking lucky, man. If that guy hadn’t taken the forty mike-mike to the chest it might have set this shit off. This right here is a crap load of one-twenty-two mill rockets.”

Clem flipped his night vision goggles up and inspected the boxes using a light attached to his body armor. They were marked with Chinese characters. The team leader helped him lift one of them down and he prised off the lid with his multi-tool. Inside were two pristine olive-green rockets.

“Two-Zero this is Two-One, Objective Batman secure,” Clem transmitted. “We’ve uncovered a major cache of rockets.”

“Two-Zero, copy. Two-Two is taking fire from Objective Robin. Get a SAW gunner up on the roof, ASAP.”

“Copy.” He turned to his second-in-command. “Rig this to blow.” Then he led the gunner out to the courtyard and up mud-brick stairs to the rooftop. His other fire team was already hunkered down pulling security. He glanced at the Taliban fighter he had shot, before positioning the gunner at the edge of the roof.

“Hey Clem, you might want to get back down here,” transmitted his second-in-command over the radio.

He trotted down the steps and back inside.

The Ranger was standing over a hole in the floor. A heavy rug and a wooden cover had been hauled aside. “Chops found it.”

Clem frowned. “Where’s he at?”

“Down there.”

He knelt by the hole and peered in. The beam from his flashlight revealed steps carved into the rock. They led down into a basement no bigger than a broom cupboard. He could see Chops standing looking at something.

“What have you got, Ranger buddy?”

“There’s a guy down here.”

“Taliban?”

“Nah bro, he’s whiter than a bleached asshole and he’s pretty fucked up.”

***

LANDSTUHL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTRE, GERMANY

Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre was the largest US military hospital outside the United States. The three hundred and ten bed facility was constructed in 1953 and had been providing surgical treatment to American servicemen ever since. In the 1990s it had been expanded and with the commencement of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq it became the closest advanced surgical facility for critically wounded personnel.

Colonel Kevin Baker had been posted to the hospital for over a year. In that time the doctor had seen hundreds of mangled bodies come through the facility’s operating theaters. Most were the victims of IEDs; home-made explosives that tore limbs from bodies, incinerated flesh, and caused horrific damage that he and his team would try, often in vain, to repair.

He yawned as he did his rounds. The previous night had been exhausting with four new patients. He’d performed emergency surgery on three Marines who’d been blown up in Helmand province. Their Humvee had hit a stack of anti-tank mines. One of them had succumbed during surgery. The other two were clinging to life. If they made it through the next twenty-four hours he gave them a fifty-fifty chance of survival.

The fourth patient, a solidly built blonde-haired Caucasian, was an anomaly. Baker stopped at his bed and picked up the chart. Discovered in a Taliban stronghold during a raid, he had been imprisoned underground. His wounds were horrendous; he’d lost a leg below the knee. His right arm was mangled almost beyond repair and was infected with gangrene. Thick scar tissue covered his torso and one side of his square jaw was badly burned.

Baker shook his head. He had seen worse wounds but never this old. In his opinion the injuries had been inflicted well over a month ago and it was a miracle he’d survived with only the barest of field medicine provided by the Taliban. He was a hard man; the damage to his body was evidence of that.

Footsteps rang on the polished floor and Baker turned to greet one of the nurses. She flashed him a bright smile as she checked the IV bag hanging above the wounded man’s bed.

“God knows how he survived,” she said checking his dressings.

“Big guy’s got the constitution of an ox.”

She studied the patient’s face. “He’s handsome too, such a waste.”

Baker turned his attention back to the chart he was holding. “His vitals are good. If we can get him out of the coma he should be OK. Have we had any luck identifying him?”

She shook her head. “No sir, we sent back a full set of prints. Heard nothing yet.”

“Might take them a while. Did he come in with any personal effects?”

“No, nothing.”

“It’s strange. No one’s mentioned any missing coalition soldiers.”

“He might be a contractor or a journalist.”

“True. So we’ve also sent photos through to ISAF headquarters?”

“Yes sir, they haven’t got back to us either.”

“Our first John Doe?”

“Looks that way.” The nurse gave the unconscious man’s mouth a dab with a cold compress then moved on to the next patient.

Baker spent a few more seconds checking the chart before hanging it on the end of the bed. He sighed. “Hang in there, buddy. You’ll be alright.”

***

Baker was sitting at his desk staring at the charts for John Blonde, as the nurses now called the mysterious casualty. In the seven days he had been at Landstuhl his vitals had improved dramatically. They now had the infection under control and his wounds had started to close over. However, he still hadn’t come out of the coma.

He picked up the MRI report and read it again. The brain surgeon had identified significant bruising but that had begun to subside. He was baffled as to why the hulk of a man hadn’t regained consciousness. He dropped the report and leaned back in his chair. What’s more they still had no idea who he was. Everyone they had sent his fingerprints and photos to had come back with zero hits. It was as if the guy never existed.

“Dr. Baker.”

The urgency of the nurse’s tone told him something was wrong. She stuck her head into his office. “Sir, there’s a bunch of men here and they’re trying to take John Blonde.”

He frowned, left his chair, and strode out of his office. He stormed past the duty desk and into the recovery ward.

There were four men in civilian clothing standing around the patient. His head nurse was glaring at them with hands on her hips. “What’s going on here?” he asked as he arrived.

The men all turned toward him revealing their scruffy beards. He noticed that one of them was wearing a pistol on his hip.

“You do realize this is a hospital and weapons are not allowed.”

“Hey bro, we’re just here to collect the stiff,” said one of the men as he chewed gum.

Baker clenched his jaw. “I’m not your, ‘bro’. I’m a Colonel. Show me your identification.” He thrust out his hand.

The man shrugged as he displayed his ID.

Baker checked it. It was as he suspected, they were
CIA
. “So, Mr. Weddell, do you have paperwork for the transfer?”

“Course I do.” He reached into the pocket of his cargo pants, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it over as he chewed.

Baker inspected the transfer document. It was correctly signed. There was nothing he could do.